Before Nicolaus turned into a prince or whatever — and I’m not being dismissive, he honestly changes from minute to minute so I’m seriously saying a prince OR WHATEVER he is this minute — he started working on a series of activities for members of the Naturalist Scouts of the Universe. He draws the picture and then dictates the instructions for me to write out. Here is the first one.

That big word at the bottom is his name in cursive. I’m just letting you know in case you can’t read cursive. Don’t feel bad! Cursive is really hard!

There will be more of these activities if and when he returns to real life stuff. Right now he’s interested in protecting dragons because they are very endangered and all. Hopefully building a jet airplane using things found in nature will be enough to keep your young children occupied until then.

Look! I found a use for that stove top area!

The beginning of this week, my mood was bad. Super bad. I was tense, irritable, tired. Screw stun, I had everything set to Kill. Too many work hours in too short a time plus computer issues plus being hassled from several directions = EVERYONE DIES.

Tuesday afternoon, I set all of my work down and headed out to take Nicolaus to an art class. On the way there I focused on clearing my head and straightening out my attitude. Oh no, my job can be frustrating poor me wah! Gah! Shut UP! And so on.

At some point I realized that part of my stress was coming from the background… a nagging, unsatisfied urge to do something creative for the pure and total fun of it. Doing all these other projects and answering work emails and running errands and all of the delays and things that are normal parts of working at a job was all driving me slowly insane because they were keeping me from carving a tricycle into a block of rubber. It’s like craving a really nice steak and having to first eat a week’s worth of Quarter Pounders.

So that night after the kids went to bed I drew trikes. Then I transferred my favorite one to a 4″x6″ block thingy, put The Daily Show on (clips on the laptop), and made a huge mess carving out little lines. Woooo! Cut, cut, cut, trim. The stress fell away. I did a test print:

A little clunky and a little… what’s the word? Radioactive. Still, I painted one print in just to see what it’ll look like:

Last night I ignored the laundry and the clutter and my own need to eat dinner and worked on the block, refining the cuts a little. Print print! Here’s where we’re at now:

Better, I think. Tonight I’ll paint them, right after I go back and hug everyone who I encountered earlier in the week and tell them I’m sorry.

ps. Thank you all SO much for your ideas on what to do for nature boy’s birthday. We’re still trying to figure out what to do — maybe the nice person’s stone mountain idea, or maybe a safari trip, or the aquarium. Then he woke up this morning all excited because he wants to go to the beach because he’s always dreamed of seeing the real ocean and he could rescue crabs and we could find a giant rock to sit on and eat cake while the tide comes in but not the massive kind of tide that comes in and like kills people. He’s clearly thought this idea through, so maybe we’ll do something like that.

I was frantic. We were driving, I was a little lost, traffic was slowing me down — but really, the only thing I was panicking over was the boys’ drooping eyes. These kids always want to crash for a nap at 5:00, sleep until 7:00 and then stay up until way after I want to be asleep. It’s a problem.

“Ohhhhh Graham!” I crooned from the front seat, “Stay awake dude!”

“I caaaaaaan’t tay awake I am tooooo tirrred.”

“Come on Graham. Ooooh wooooo hey! What are you? Huh?” I annoy myself too, don’t worry.

He sleepily groaned, “I ammm a humUNGISSSSS. Robot.” We Netflixed The Iron Giant and it changed our young son into a robot. I’m thinking about writing those people a letter. There should be a warning on the box.

“Yeah! Stay awake, robot!”

“I caaaaannnn’t.”

“Hey, I know! Who wants a Kit Kat? Anyone who stays awake until we get to the store can have a Kit Kat.”

“I DO Mama. I do want a Kit Kat.”

It’s the only candy they know by name and holy shit! OMG! I just remembered that we have one in this very house! Hang on…

Okay I can’t find it. Damn that Kevin straight to hell.

So Graham perked up at the mention of a Kit Kat and decided to stay awake. I looked in the rearview mirror, all proud of myself and – god damn it! Nicolaus was gazing out the window.

“Nicolaussssssss don’t go to sleep! Don’t you want a Kit Kat?”

“I’ll try my best Mama. But I don’t think I’m going to stay awake, not even for a Kit Kat.”

“Are you sure? Try try try!”

“I don’t think I can do it.”

Graham cheerfully offered, “I will eat. Nicolissis Kit Kat, MAMA.”

“No you won’t! It’s mine!”

“Yiss I CAN eat it Nicoliss. I am not sleeping NICOLISS.”

“You’d better not.”

Graham was giggling, “Yes I WILL eat it Nicolissss!”

Nicolaus howled, “NOOOOOOO!!!”

Graham waited for everything to quiet down, and then with beautiful comic timing said, “I can eat Nicolissis Kit Kat Mama.”

I tried to avert total war by saying haha hey I know what! Graham can eat Nicolaus’, I can eat Graham’s, and Nicolaus can eat mine. Haha get it? Cute, except that one kid has zero sense of humor when he’s tired.

“NO. Just STOP it, Mama.” Nicolaus wasn’t kidding around, “We should each only eat the one that is meant for us. That is the only fair way to do it.”

We drove for a minute in silence. I found my turn. Graham laughed and said, “No Mama. I am going to eat my Kit Kat AND I am going to eat Nicolississ Kit Kat too.”

It’s a good thing we have child locks or I swear there are times when Nicolaus would open the door at a stop light, let himself out, and walk away from all of us smartasses forever.

So last year we asked Nicolaus what he’d like to do for his birthday. His request was simple: He wanted to drive to the top of a real mountain and see a wild cougar. We’re living in Georgia now where mountains are fairly doable, but last year? We weren’t anywhere NEAR a mountain. So we rented a room at the nearest animal safari thingy, drove through and stopped at the top of a hill and said hey look! We’re on a mountain! Because let’s get a grip, to a four year old the right kind of overpass can be a mountain. And we didn’t see a cougar, but they had cheetahs which come on are seriously the same exact thing.

Then Graham barfed in the car and then he kept throwing up and throwing up, making it the best birthday ever if you like horrifying people in public with gross baby barf.

This year, we asked him again, “Hey Nicolaus, what would you like to do to celebrate your birthday this year?”

God, we’re dumb.

His first idea was to go back up to the state park we visited recently, the one up in the mountains. He wanted to rent a cabin, then bake a cake in the cabin, then have everyone join him out on the lake shore to eat cake and play on the giant rocks and sing happy birthday. A perfect plan except that his birthday is in February, he hates cold weather, those cabins are all booked through April, and after that they’ll cost $200 a night. What’s that, son? You want to go to Chuck E Cheese? Yay!

So we finally told him that even though his idea is really neat, we probably will need to simplify a little bit. Probably by like, not doing it. He said he’d need to think about it, so we left him alone about it for a few days. So yesterday we asked him, “Hey, did you ever figure out what you want to do for your birthday?”

“Yes!”

“Cool, what is it?”

“We’re going to move.”

“Oh! Um.”

“We are going to build a house out in nature, all of us together will build it, especially me and daddy and papa, and then we’ll live in it.”

So shit. That’s not going to happen either. We were thinking maybe a nice trip to the museum or something.

But there’s not much doubt that when these kids were born we put them in charge, right? Which was really hard at first because trying to divine what a baby wants us to do as a family is really hard. But we did our darndest. That’s why we don’t have a TV anymore. We’re pretty sure that’s what he said! Something important about the TV anyway.

So anyway, after the boys fell asleep last night, Kevin and I did start talking about moving. Not right this minute, not now oh God I don’t even want to LOOK at another moving box right now. But somewhere down the line, there’s another place for us. If I’m still doing this job, it needs to be somewhere close enough to Atlanta that I can drive here for meetings once every week or two. We’d like it to be somewhere semi-rural enough for a big garden and a goat and a rhinocerous or whatever all farm animals Kevin wants to have. But somewhere not full of scary meth freaks, alcoholics, and/or freaky racist gay-haters. People can be country, they can be down-home, they can fry all their food. But if they could not also be assholes, that would be ideal.

In the meantime, I’m supposed to come up with options that Nicolaus can choose from. He refuses to come up with any more birthday ideas as long as we are being so unreasonable.

If you have to be trapped somewhere, in your cozy bedroom under a down comforter with breathing sleeping kids on either side is probably one of the nicer options. I’ve been awake for an hour at least. There are so many things I could work on if I got out of bed and toook advantage of this rare quiet time alone while Kevin and the boys slept in.

I could finish some drawings. I could call my boss at work. I could shower. Oh man, I could pee. That would be awesome.

But if I get up, the snoring lump on my left arm will wake up and cry. And/or roll off the bed. And then he’ll wake up and cry.

The bigger thing that’s pressed against my right arm — the thing that keeps flopping over to kick the laptop — will then wake up, having been woken up by the crying and all. He won’t wake up happy either; he’ll gripe and demand to know where his crown is.

And Kevin well, will probably stay asleep because you know.

So I’m in bed, trapped in the warm dark breathing snoring mess of flannel pajamas and pillows and socks and stuffed animals that all trickle in here through the night almost every night. We have a leak or something.

Ahhh! The young king is whispering to himself and stretching. He says he’s making up words in another language that mean “My mama is pretty.”
Alright, today can start now.